Steam Announces First 10 Greenlight Approvals

[Timothy Chang]

Steam Announces First 10 Greenlight Approvals

Half-Life remake Black Mesa makes the list of top voted games.

Steam Greenlight, Valve's ambitious new service giving users the power to decide what they'd rather see for sale in Steam's store, has only been around for a couple of weeks. In that time, however, a list of games has already made the cut. Valve has decided to go ahead with ten titles that have earned enough votes from the community to be greenlit.

The list of submissions includes Half-Life remake Black Mesa, as well as other Greenlight favorites such as Heroes & Generals and Dream. Developers who made the list are required to send Valve a build of the game and then continually refine and improve the product as they work on marketing and, eventually, launch. As such, it may be a while before we see these titles in the store, especially as some of these titles are still in development.

The full list of greenlit games:
Black Mesa
Heroes & Generals
Cry of Fear
Routine
Kenshi
Towns
No More Room in Hell
Project Zomboid
Dream
McPixel

"The Steam community rallied around these titles and made them the clear choice for the first set of titles to launch out of Greenlight," said Valve's Anna Sweet.

"Since launch, hundreds of titles have been submitted, with more coming in every day. We expect to be announcing more titles coming to Steam via Greenlight soon."

Steam Greenlight launched only two weeks ago to a flood of submissions, not all of them genuine [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119411-Frauds-Plague-Steams-Greenlight]. Valve has since introduced a $100 submission fee to minimize the amount of spam and of fraudulent entries, stating that it will donate the proceeds to Penny Arcade's charity Child's Play.

Source: Gamasutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/177516/No_surprises_with_Steam_Greenlights_first_approvals.php#.UFBE940ge_g]

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[Magnalian]

Wait, wasn't McPixel already a game? Why does that still need to be greenlit?

 

[Evil Smurf]

Wait, wasn't McPixel already a game? Why does that still need to be greenlit?

it is'n't even a very good game :/

 

[Vivi22]

Wait, wasn't McPixel already a game? Why does that still need to be greenlit?

Greenlight isn't about getting a game made necessarily, it's about getting your game on Steam.

 

[Sight Unseen]

Wait, wasn't McPixel already a game? Why does that still need to be greenlit?

Greenlighting just means that Steam will be officially selling it eventually on their digital distribution network.


Project Zomboid is also available for purchase on Desura and on their website, but it's still in early alpha and won't be released on Steam until they feel confident they have a relatively stable and content complete 1.0 version to put there. It's a lot of fun already though in the early alpha mode. If you're interested in an ACTUAL zombie apocalypse survival RPG then you should check it out. They even have a free demo (albeit of a fairly old and incomplete build of the game)

I'm happy that 4 of the games that I voted for made the cut including Black Mesa, Project Zomboid, Dream, and No More Room in Hell.

 

[Magnalian]

Wait, wasn't McPixel already a game? Why does that still need to be greenlit?

Greenlighting just means that Steam will be officially selling it eventually on their digital distribution network.


Project Zomboid is also available for purchase on Desura and on their website, but it's still in early alpha and won't be released on Steam until they feel confident they have a relatively stable and content complete 1.0 version to put there. It's a lot of fun already though in the early alpha mode. If you're interested in an ACTUAL zombie apocalypse survival RPG then you should check it out. They even have a free demo (albeit of a fairly old and incomplete build of the game)

I'm happy that 4 of the games that I voted for made the cut including Black Mesa, Project Zomboid, Dream, and No More Room in Hell.

I'm pretty sure everybody on Steam voted for Black Mesa, I know I did

 

[Doom972]

I'm surprised Valve approved of Black Mesa. I know they support modding, but I thought even they wouldn't want it on Steam since it might compete with Half Life and Half Life: Source (especially with Black Mesa being free).
I think Valve just raised the bar again.

 

[N3squ1ck]

Awh, and the new Octodad didn't make it in there so far?
I has sad now

 

[omicron1]

I'm worried that a one-size-fits-all bar will catch popular games (Black Mesa) while leaving niche titles (Frayed Knights, that one Roman strategy game) to founder in obscurity. It's great that zombie games are getting in, but not so great that so many things are not.

 

[FEichinger]

I'm surprised Valve approved of Black Mesa. I know they support modding, but I thought even they wouldn't want it on Steam since it might compete with Half Life and Half Life: Source (especially with Black Mesa being free).
I think Valve just raised the bar again.

It saves them the cost of remaking it for the new state of the art. It gives players a reason to buy HL2+Episodes, as they can now experience large parts of the first game without those "filthy bad graphics".
I honestly doubt HL1 sells well enough for them to care at this point.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Woohoo, I upvoted most of those!

The more release platforms Project Zomboid gets, the better.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

I'm so glad that Kenshi got greenlit. Everyone should check that game out, it's amazing for a game built by just one guy. Seriously this game got no love from the reporters of this site while others actually told people about this gem. It may be in alpha but its potential is too great to say it won't lead to something great.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

I'm surprised Valve approved of Black Mesa. I know they support modding, but I thought even they wouldn't want it on Steam since it might compete with Half Life and Half Life: Source (especially with Black Mesa being free).
I think Valve just raised the bar again.

It saves them the cost of remaking it for the new state of the art. It gives players a reason to buy HL2+Episodes, as they can now experience large parts of the first game without those "filthy bad graphics".
I honestly doubt HL1 sells well enough for them to care at this point.

I grabbed it a few years ago when they had it for 98 cents for the 10th anniversary (because it came out in '98) just for the hell of it to have a copy on my Steam account, but I'd also be surprised if it sells much outside of the Valve Complete Pack or occasional Half-Life sale bundles. Valve was pretty much built on modding and being cool with other people doing whatever they want with their content as long as they're not selling it though, and it's not like they didn't have years to complain about Black Mesa if they had a problem with it (which they obviously don't). And I personally am ok with anything that enables more people to appreciate Freeman's Mind. Heh.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I'm planning on buying at least half of those game, maybe all of them just to show support.

IMO gaming needs to move away from "industry" and back towards passion and art. Multi-million dollar budgets aren't worth having creativity and innovation placed after business considerations.

Hats off to all of these independent developers.

 

[Bindal]

Funfact about these 10 games: They are 10 of the Top 11 most voted games on Greenlight. There is exactly ONE game, that didn't make the cut and I am not surprised that it didn't. Even better: It was the 2nd most voted game, so Valve skipped number 2 this time and went straight to 3.
(Please insert your 'Valve can't count to 3' jokes here)
Said game is "Slender: Source". Am I surprised? Nope.

I'm surprised Valve approved of Black Mesa. I know they support modding, but I thought even they wouldn't want it on Steam since it might compete with Half Life and Half Life: Source (especially with Black Mesa being free).
I think Valve just raised the bar again.

Not surprising at all, they wanted to play the damn thing as well and couldn't. Well, now in less than two days, they finally can - and in a few weeks, we can get it on Steam, too (as the folks at Valve need to stop playing it to death for five minutes and add it to Steam for download).

 

[Woodsey]

I'm worried that a one-size-fits-all bar will catch popular games (Black Mesa) while leaving niche titles (Frayed Knights, that one Roman strategy game) to founder in obscurity. It's great that zombie games are getting in, but not so great that so many things are not.

They've said previously that it won't just be a matter of sheer numbers. Time will tell, I suppose. It's certainly too early to make statements like: "It's great that zombie games are getting in, but not so great that so many things are not", when we're only looking at the first ten games, however.

 

[BENZOOKA]

It's an interesting project.

Although, the little I have browsed through some games on Greenlight, there seems to be a, overabundance of survival (horror/thriller) games.